Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Solving Real-World Problems With Beer [Real Men Of Genius]

Posted Jul 30, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Jul 30, 2009 at 01:24 PM

They’re calling it the Beer Summit.

Later this afternoon, right around dinnertime, President Obama will have a sit-down over suds in the back yard of the White House with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley.

The goal, the president’s handlers say, is to take advantage of “a teachable moment.” Or at least a drinkable one.

Hey, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

Not since the Carter Administration, when the president’s beer-swilling brother Billy became notorious enough to have his own label of brew, has the adult beverage held such a prominent place on White House grounds. And we all know how that turned out.

To recap: Two weeks ago today, Gates was arrested by Crowley after a neighbor reported that it appeared someone was breaking into Gates’ home. Turns out it was Gates, who was none too pleased by Crowley’s response to the emergency call and the assumption that he was a burglar. Words flew and Crowley cuffed Gates for disorderly conduct. The charge was later dismissed. When asked to comment during a press conference about the incident, Obama said police acted “stupidly.”

A relatively ugly couple of weeks ensued, with fellow cops backing Crowley, prominent black leaders backing Gates and Obama handlers spinning the president’s reaction into something closer to a malaprop than an attack on police profiling. Talk radio went nuts. News editorials flourished. Bloggers did what bloggers do.

To his credit, Larry King stayed on the Michael Jackson story.

So Obama called the two men and invited them to the White House today for a soul-healing brewski. The irony: Domestic disturbances involving beer usually find it being applied before the incident, not after. Well, sometimes after. But you get the point.

Looking for any chance to dig through an already excavated issue, reporters this week have frothed over the beers each person selected for their hoppy huddle. Gates went with the Jamaican beer Red Stripe. Crowley asked for the Belgian-style, Coors-produced Blue Moon label. Obama wanted a Bud Light.

Cue the music:

“Bud Light presents, “Real Men of Genius.”

Reeeeal men of geeeeeeeenius…

“Today we salute YOU, Prominent Gentlemen of Racial Politics…”

Prominent gentlemen of racial politics!

‘You used the swizzle stick of controversy to stir the national conversation about race relations and community policing.

Stir a little less, please!

More importantly, you’ve given us an American dream: Conflict resolution that relies on consumption of alcoholic beverages on federal property while guarded by the U.S. Secret Service. It’s an idea only Secretary of State Homer Simpson could have imagined.”

Doh! I’m dreaming!

“The only way this could get better is if Nancy Pelosi and Rush Limbaugh were to drop by for a sloppy game of beer pong.”

Princess and El Rushbo!

“Some will criticize this moment as an idea that’s half-empty. Emboldened by your beverages, you can feel free to reply that it’s merely half-drunk.”

Bartender, pour me another!

“So, thank you, prominent gentlemen of racial politics. You put the brew in brouhaha.”

Prominent gentlemen of racial pollllllllitics.